Everyone loves a stuffed fox.
Well, maybe not everyone. But a lot of people stopped and took pictures of this little guy, as well as the many characters (human, beast, and other) that sat on the floor. What better way than this to promote a book with "Taxidermy" in the title?
As long as we're on inanimate objects...
True confession -- I have a soft spot for puppets. You love the book? Now you can make the characters come alive through puppetry. Now why didn't the publishers of 50 Shades...

Companies that give back -- and the people behind them -- are the rock stars of any industry.
Todd Lawter's company Out of Print donates a book for every product sold. His company's booth giveaway was a classic -- Farenheit 451 matches, imprinted with Ray Bradbury's quote "It was a pleasure to burn" and "Read and Destroy."
Capturing imagination is what reading is all about. What else can help bring back reading, story telling and the written word?
The Storymatic presents "six t...

Rule breakers and people with senses of humor are my business heroes.
When I began my career in the publishing industry, I looked to Workman Publishing (founded in 1968 by the late Peter Workman) as the innovators. An independent company, they always went way beyond the book. Their fun and unique approaches to packaging and product line extensions wowed me. "What to Expect When You're Expecting" got me through the nine months awaiting my first daughter and the Brain Quest series (still in pri...

We always like to be positive. But every show has room for improvement.
Ah yes...every show has at least one unstaffed display. The boxes were pretty and empty...and so was the booth.
Some press rooms at shows make covering the show for this blog super-easy. The one at BEA was staffed by tired temps who just pointed me towards a rack of press releases. Suggestion for show management: Create a simple "tour map" like the ones you find in travel guides. Given that I only had three hours t...

Usually, we cover "behind the scenes" stuff in this section but...
We're going to talk about under the covers stuff instead. Sex sells. It's that simple and that timeless. Erotic romance was simply oozing out into the aisles at the Ellora's Cave booth. A security guard was there to ensure no one got too close to the Cave Men.
Everyone knows that behind the white picket fences of suburbia lurk liars, cheaters. and naughty and curious boys and girls. I ran into two of my own neighbors from t...